Fun and Games 2 - activities

I've been asked over and over again to produce a worksheet for my Fun and Games 2 workshop so instead of wasting paper, here it is! Although I believe that no explanation or description will truly show the spirit of any game, I do hope you find my ideas useful. And please, do drop me a line should you have something to add.

Those of you who have come to see me in Paris and Salamanca might have not seen all the games described below as due to time constraints I had to modify and cut out some of the activities. 

1. Paper Conversations - students work in pairs. They need a piece of paper and something to write. Tell them they need to write a question they would like to ask their friend. Next, they exchange the papers, read the question they were given, answer it in writing, and write a follow up question to continue the conversation. They exchange papers again and continue repeating all the steps i.e. read the question, answer it, write a follow up. It works really well with very noisy classes especially teenagers as the students shouldn't speak at all during the activity. Also, used at the beginning of a class it tends to have a calming effect on the students. As a follow up, you may ask your students to take their 'paper conversation' home and look for any mistakes (tenses, question formation etc) and rewrite it or expand both questions and answers.
2. The longest word - students line up in two rows facing the board. The teacher writes a long word horizontally (or vertically, which is an easier option) on the board twice (there should be one word for each group). After a signal, the students run to the board one by one and write down words beginning with one of the letters in the word written by the teacher in any order. The team that finishes first, wins. Extra point may be given to the team that writes the longest word. It works really well as a filler, ice-breaker or as a way of eliciting new lexis once you tell the students that they must write only certain types of words (e.g. personality adjectives or animals). 
3. A-Z race - students line up in two rows facing the board. The teacher writes all letters of the alphabet on the board twice, one on the left, one on the right (there should be set of letters for each group). The teacher chooses a category e.g. clothes, food, animals, sports etc. The students, after making a group decision, choose to eliminate 3-5 letters from each set of alphabets (the decision on how many depends on the teacher). Having done that, after a signal, the students run to the board one by one and write words beginning with each of the letters of alphabet in any order. The team that finishes first i.e. has a word for all the letters, wins. A variation involves having only one set of letters on a whiteboard and giving two teams two markers of different colours. In this case, the teacher decides who won by counting the words (e.g. 15 words written in green and 10 in blue means that the green marker team won). I use this game for brainstorming and eliciting ideas but it works fine as a revision acitivity as well.
4. Revision Game - prepare a set of 25 A4 cards (scrap paper in my case). Number each card (A1-A5, B1-B5, C1-C5, D1-D5, E1-E5). On each card write a question or task you want your students to answer. To do it, copy things from the revision unit in the coursebook you're using. Three of the cards should contain a Bonus point. On the board create a grid 

   

   Revision game grid

   and divide your students into teams of 3-4 people. Each team, one at a time, chooses a square from the grid e.g. B2 and gets a corresponding question which they have to answer having agreed on the correct option. If they don't know the answer or answer wrong, the question passes to the next team (and so on if necessary). In this way, all the students are focusing on getting the question right, not only the team whose turn it is. When they hit the bonus point card, a point is given to them without any task. When nobody knows the answer, the teacher supplies it as the real objective of the game is to revise, not to get points, which you may want to remind the students from time to time. At the end, the team with the biggest number of points wins.

   

   Example of question cards

   An alternative involves writing all the questions in your notebook and simply reading them out to students. It's a time-saver but in this case the students can only hear the questions and not see them which makes the activity more difficult for some and slightly tedious and monotonous. Preparation of question cards takes roughly 30 minutes.
5. Two circles game (aka Spinning Ideas) this game is based on a worksheet I found on my desk one day and which has been recently identified as Spinning Ideas ('Games for Grammar Practice' by CUP). I have also seen a similar activity in 'Working with Words' by CUP. In the original game, the students, after being put in pairs or small groups, were presented with two circles containing places and certain modal verbs (see below). The teacher or a student rolls a dice twice (one for each circle) and depending on the number moved around each circle. Next the students had to write down three sentences combining a place from one circle with a modal verb from the other e.g. 5 and 5 - what you shouldn't do on holiday. Sentences are read aloud and 2 points are given if a sentence is logical and grammatically correct, 1 point, if there are some mistakes.

   

   The original worksheet

   In my version of the game in circle one (C1) you may put question words e.g. where, how and in C2 tenses eg. past simple, present perfect or C1- question words, C2 - numbers e.g. 4,7,12 which means that students have to make a question with that particular number of words. An alternative is a phrasal verbs game with C1 containing verbs such as go, get, put, make, set, take and C2 - on, in, off, out, up, down. In this case, the students have to decide if a chosen combination of words exists and make a sentence using a particular phrasal verb accurately to show its meaning.
6. Who am I? (What am I?, Which city am I? etc)- the teacher prepares small cards with famous people’s/ film/ book character’s names – one for each student (you can use sticky labels to do that).

   

   Labels with names of film/TV characters

   The choice of characters depends on what you're currently working on. It could be animals, countries, cities, adjectives, phrasal verbs, professions etc. Each card is placed on the students’ backs. Their task is to walk around and ask questions to find out who they are. Students should start with yes/no questions only e.g. ‘Am I an actor?’, ‘Do I have long hair?’ to make the activity a bit more challenging. After a few minutes you can allow other questions too. Make sure students talk only to one person at at time, otherwise they will stick to someone for the entire activity and also have extra sets of cards prepared for fast finishers. With low levels and kids, provide some scaffolding by writing some questions on the board for them to refer to. The youngest students I've tried the activity with were around nine years old and the topic was professions.
7. Call my bluff - students are put into teams and given dictionaries, one for each team. The teams choose a few difficult, new words from the dictionary that they think other people in class may not be familiar with. Stick around closely and help them choose as teenagers tend look for offensive language and slang and adults sometimes choose specialized words which, in general, are not the most useful ones to know. Next they have to create definitions for each word, only one of which should be correct. Allow them to copy parts of the definition from the dictionary but not all of it. When each team has e.g. 3 definitions they read them out to each other, choose the correct option and are given points. It's nice to keep putting all the words on the board and use them later e.g. to play Hot Seats or to write a story as homework. Needless to say, it's one of my first choices to practise relative clauses.

 

Have fun playing the games with your students!

(re)Discovering Translation in ELT

One of the very first things you learn on your CELTA course is that translation or using the students' mother tongue in any way is a big no-no. And although it's really hard on you as a teacher to teach, very often, beginners solely in English, it does prepare you for real life classroom situations.
I had the opportunity to experience that natural communication barrier twice, in Turkey and in Spain, and it certainly was difficult. At the same time however, the satisfaction I felt when the students understood what I was trying to say was immeasurable and clearly worth the effort.

Looking back, I am absolutely positive that making us all sweat eliciting the Present Perfect Continuous was the right thing to do. Let's not forget that some of us teach in multilingual environments where relying on translation may be impossible. Also, having the easiest way of conveying meaning crossed off the list makes you dig deep and discover ways of expressing yourself you've never thought you had in you.

On the other hand, do you remember your CELTA foreign language class?
Do you remember how you felt?

In my case it was a class of Japanese and I felt like a complete idiot. Not only because I had no idea what the teacher was saying. I had the feeling that everyone apart from me understood everything. Also my fellow trainees were able to memorize and repeat the phrases much faster than me. So I stood there mindlessly repeating stuff which later turned out to be 'I'm a student' and 'You're the teacher'. Who would have thought!

I also remember my Turkish class two years later. It was not even remotely connected to communicative approach and my level higher than elementary but I do recall feeling the constant need for clarification. Not knowing what a particular word or structure meant was sometimes driving me crazy.

As my knowledge of both Turkish and Spanish grew, I started using my students' L1 in some cases. To get rid of some classroom management issues, to speed things up etc. You can read about the reasoning behind using L1 in class in one of my previous posts here. Even though using translation was(is?) 'forbidden', it did come naturally and to tell you the truth, felt far from wrong.

As you can imagine, I was thrilled to listen to Philip Kerr's talk about using L1 during the IH Barcelona conference in February but Paul Seligson was the one who hit the nail on the head during the TESOL Spain colloquium in March.

The ideas Philip Kerr presented were based on his experience teaching English in Austria to, I assume, mostly German speakers. One of my favourites was 'the sandwich technique' he showed, used mainly for instruction giving. It consists of the teacher saying the instruction, or parts of it, in English, students' L1 and English again e.g. 'Could you open, abrir, open the window?' Once your students get the word/ phrase, you simply stop using L1 and continue in English. This technique worked really well with my beginner classes as it did give the students some help with understanding, boosted their confidence and created a much more relaxed atmosphere.

Some other great ideas were:

• using a red and green card; red meaning that English is spoken only, green meaning that L1 is temporarily allowed
• teacher's position in the classroom meaning 'English only' or 'L1 allowed' e.g. when the teacher is standing next to the window, the students may use L1
• having a list of false friends on the wall but also a list of true friends i.e. words or expressions that are the same or very similar in English and L1
• having examples of bad English (resulting from translation) on the wall
• allowing students 2 min prep time in L1
• appointing a Language Monitor (student or teacher) - someone who will silently note down all the examples of students using their L1 in class. Later students will have to translate them, with the help of the teacher, dictionaries, apps or as homework
• Own Language Mirroring - if a student says or writes something incorrect in English, the teacher translates it back into L1 the way s/he understood which should make the student see the mistake more clearly.

Paul Seligson's talk, to take the matter further, was specifically aimed at teachers of English to Spanish speaking students. Instead of constantly telling the students to 'think in English' which he believed just does not happen, he presented a bunch of activities focusing on using Spanish as reference, building on already existing knowledge. Knowing that around 60% of English vocabulary is of French/ Latin origin and that in some cases grammar rules and structures are (almost) exactly the same in both languages, it does sound ridiculous not to take advantage of something that is presenting itself in plain sight, right?

Paul quite severely criticized the communicative approach, pointing out that, very often, we tend to pray for the weakest students to understand our instructions or explanations being satisfied with one bright individual (who he called 'wikipedia') supplying the answer on the spot. He claimed, calling students 'victims of the system',  that there are people for whom the communicative approach in its pure form simply doesn't work. Does that ring any bells?

One of the suggestions given during the talk was providing students with cognates first and consciously using them, especially at low levels during instruction giving and all other tasks. For example, it will be easier for the students to understand 'It's not necessary' rather than 'You don't have to' as the first expression bears a resemblance to Spanish.

Students should also be made aware of how certain suffixes translate into English and encouraged to seek patterns e.g. English plastic, traffic becomes plastico and trafico in Spanish. There are some useful examples here, here and here.

Here are some other ideas:

• tell the students to think of: 1 day of the week , 4 numbers up to ten, 2 colours, 3 parts of the face, 5 common clothes etc. that are similar in both languages 
• provide the students with a list of words e.g. months or animals(cognates) on the board and letting them think and decide if the stress in those words(pr the pronunciation) are the same or different in Spanish and English
• make use of contrastive (as opposed to inductive and deductive) grammar e.g. by writing a sentence in Spanish on board and asking the students to translate it stressing at the same time the similarities or possible differences. In my case, it worked really well with articles. (If you prefer to stand by eliciting grammar rules, take a look at this fantastic article by Alex Case.)
• lett students whisper in their mother tongue
• encourage your students to write translation in their notebooks in pencil and then rubbing it off once they remember the word/expression

The best thing about all those ideas is that the teacher does not actually speak any Spanish in class. The students, similarly, mostly do only the 'thinking' in Spanish.

The worst thing, well, you have to know your students' L1 in order to help them make use of it while learning English.

Should we let translation sneak into our classrooms and perhaps into the CELTA syllabus or is it something a teacher should naturally discover?
Maybe we should continue looking at translation with disgust and stick to English only?

Last but not least, thank you Philip and Paul for some wonderful and inspiring ideas.
It was a pleasure learning from you!

Fun and Games - activities

I've decided never to produce worksheets but here we are :)

After my Fun and Games workshop on Saturday, I started receiving emails from teachers who either attended or couldn't attend my session, asking for a worksheet summarizing the activities I presented. And although I believe in learning by doing and feel that no worksheet will show you how much fun you can have playing games, I felt obliged to write something. 

What you can see below is partly a collection of my older blog posts (this one and that one) plus three new ideas.

If you were there on Saturday, thank you for coming (especially if you were sitting on the floor or 'volunteering')! If you couldn't make it because the room was full, sorry! I do hope I'll get the chance to do that workshop again.

1. The Spelling Race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. Make sure you draw a line on the floor and let students know that only the person with the marker can cross it. The teacher calls out a word. Students have to write it down letter by letter i.e. each letter is written by one student. Every student has one move – s/he can write down a letter or make one correction if a mistake has been made. The team that finishes first wins (provided that they spelt a word correctly!). You can ask the team that lost for a definition, if they are able to provide it, they might get a point as well. Perfect for a revision before an exam!

2. The Dolmuş game – a dolmuş is a shared taxi. Once you get in, you have to pay the driver which is complicated if you sit somewhere at the back. So what people in Turkey (and elsewhere, I guess) do is pat the person sitting if front of them on the shoulder and ask to pass the money forward.

During the game, students sit in rows, one student behind the other facing the board. Each student has a pen and the ones sitting at the end of the rows hold a piece of paper. The teacher then calls out a category e.g. words beginning with S, animals, past tense verb forms etc. Each student writes one word belonging to the given category and passes the paper forward. The team that hands the paper to the teacher first, wins. Extra points may be given to the team that wrote the longest/ most sophisticated word. Also, you may make it more fun by letting each group have only one pen that has to passed along with the paper.

3. Hot seats - the class is divided into two teams. A member of each team sits facing the class, with his or her back to the board. The teacher writes a word or a short phrase on the blackboard and the team must define the word or give examples of its use – without saying the actual word itself. If the student guesses, the team gets a point. I always subtract points if the students speak their mother tongue and at the beginning give each team three points for a good start!

4. Stand up if you.../ (Change your seats if you...) – students sit in a circle, the teacher stands in the middle of the circle and says: ‘Stand up if you have brushed your teeth today’. Once students stand up, the teacher sits down on the nearest chair and students quickly do the same (no need for explanation, they just get the idea!) but one is left standing. S/he must now say ‘Stand if you have...’ and ideally sit down on the nearest seat available once the students stand up wishing to change seats. There is no winner in this game and it may continue for as long as one desires. You might want to add an extra rule and forbid changing the seat for the one on the right or left as it's too easy that way.

You can play this game to practise a number of things:

- past tense e.g. ‘Stand up if you watched a film yesterday.’

- like/ hate etc +V ing e.g. ‘Stand up if you like swimming.’

- describing appearance e.g. ‘Stand up if you have blue eyes.’ (this is my Turkish students’ favourite :)

etc

5. Papers on Walls - students and the teacher write their name on the top of pieces of paper (A4 or half the size) and stick them all randomly on the walls (using blue tack or anything you wish to use). Next they have to write three questions they can ask the people in the class; when they're ready the teacher walks around and corrects if necessary. After that the students stand up and ask each other the questions on their list. However they mustn't write anything and can only ask one question at a time. They also have to try to remember what their classmates (and the teacher) told them. After 10/15 minutes (depending on your class size), the students are told to take a pen and write whatever they can remember about their classmates on the appropriate papers with students' names on the walls. When the teacher stops the activity, everyone collects the paper with their name from the wall, reads it, checks if the information is right and corrects the mistakes as homework.

This game is great for the first day but you can play it to revise and practise many structures for example by limiting the questions to present perfect only. You might as well ask the students to begin with questions words (where, when, why, what etc) or make the focus only on one topic e.g. education. 

Alternatively the questions may refer to past, present and future and each student might be focusing on a different topic (decided by you). With low levels, you could simply give them the questions or provide a simple gap fill e.g. What __ your f___ colour?, When ___ you ___ go shopping? etc.

6. Prefixes/ Suffixes race - students sit in two, three groups (depending on the size of your classroom and the board) and choose a runner-writer that will represent each team. The teacher calls out a suffix e.g. -less. The students shout out all the words containing that suffix to the runner and he/she has to write them all on the board in e.g. 1 minute. The team with more words or the team with a bigger number of words that are different, wins. Also, you may give different suffixes to each team because, as many of you can imagine, students simply love cheating while playing this game :)

Instead of suffixes and prefixes, you may want students to write e.g. words beginning with 'sp', 'br' or simply any letter if they are low level group. My students really liked writing words that contained 'oo' 'tt' etc.

7. True/ False Coin game - students stand in two lines facing each other, make sure everyone has a partner (if not, there might be one group of three). Each pair has one coin. Tell them that they will have to toss the coin and depending on what they get say something to their partner. If what they get is a head, they need to tell the truth, if it's a tail, they must lie (in a convincing way!).The teacher decides on the topic and says e.g. tell your partner about the food you used to eat as a child or tell your partner about the worst restaurant you've ever visited, if you are talking about food. Having listened, the partner then has to say if what he/she listened to was true or false (a lie). Next they coin goes to the other student in a pair (the one who was listening), he/she tosses it, the teacher reads a new sentence and the game continues. 

Have fun playing the games with your students! 

For me there's nothing better than to hear them laugh and enjoy themselves while learning English :)